I hope this thread is in the right place. If not, please move it to wherever is most appropriate.

I noticed the other day that my laptop multi-burner was blinking and behaving erratically. It appears to be at the end of its useful life. That, and some changes in habits and living situation mean that I'm in the market for a couple of things:

1. CD/DVD ripper- I will be using this drive semi-regularly, primarily to hear and rip retail CDs. Accessing or playing DVDs is not on the table at present but easy to imagine at some point in the future. (I assume that a top-DAE drive is not hindered by also being able to read DVDs. Please correct me if I'm wrong.) I was planning to use EAC to do the ripping, but I'm considering dBpoweramp too. I own a license to a prior version of dBpoweramp and would happily upgrade to the reference package, so things are flexible. I guess that means I definitely want C2 support. Speed is good, but I'm not going to be ripping dozens of discs all the time, so never at the expense of quality. What else do I need to worry about?

2. Multiformat optical burner- I will be using this drive irregularly, but when I do, it needs to work first time every time. Versatility and flexibility are the goal, and dual layer would be a big a plus for the future. HD DVD / Blu-ray (read, nevermind write) are a seperate problem for another time.


I'm open to these being the same drive, but happy to go best-of-breed. I don't want to waste, but I'm willing to spend real money. If nothing currently on the market is appropriate, I'm willing to do legwork to go find a used drive that's a classic.

I'm assuming that I can find an appropriate USB 2.0 enclosure for each drive. Recommendations welcome for enclosures too.

Recommendations? Comments? Frameworks I should be thinking about?

Many thanks...